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Why Stupid Matters
We humans evolved under relatively simple conditions. For nearly all the 400,000 years that our ancestors were adapting to environmental pressures, those pressures were surprisingly constant and straightforward. Aside from avoiding predators, looking for food, and staring at natural phenomenon such as rain and thunderstorms, we mostly spent our time like every group species must: trying to out-compete each other.
We learned to tell lies so we could gain advantage over others and we learned to try to detect lies so others wouldn’t gain advantage over us. Somewhere along the line, perhaps around 70,000 years ago, one or more genetic mutations resulted in the human brain becoming capable of creating fantasies. As some of those fantasies enabled us to develop larger-scale cooperation and as that cooperation had survival benefits, the mutations spread throughout the population until they were added to the sum of the human genome. That’s why we believe in things that don’t exist, such as ghouls and gods and goblins and ghosts. That’s why we believe in souls and spooks and in the efficacy of prayer and ritual.
Sure, there were always and there continues to be massive downsides to living in fantasy-land but evolution has no way to go back and undo things; life is always moving forward, adapting whatever already exists in order to achieve a slightly better fit with the present environment…
